Post navigation

5 thoughts on “Learning From Other Writers”

Very, very true. Pratchett and King have both given similar advice that to be a good writer, one must be a great reader. They also made note to be sure to read not only in one genre’s but outside of it. You never know where a great idea may come from.

Exactly! A lot of people sometimes focus on books that talk about the craft of writing in an effort to perfect their technical skills, but for me, it kills the creative spark in me to follow tables and word counts and genre formulas. So I just read – my e-reader is full of books of all kinds, and my library of books is overflowing.

Well, one shouldn’t have write to a formula, but one should learn the general rules before one breaks them. If a writer doesn’t understand why a rule exists, it’s unlikely they will break it effectively and instead it just won’t work.

If one looks at the progression of Joyce’s work, you can see he mastered the language and the rules *before* he jumped into Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. That’s why those books worked ratehr than just being messes. He knew what he was doing when he broke the rules.

I think I acquired writing by total immersion almost before I could read – it was far more fascinating than playing outside. You can’t duplicate those hours spent reading as a kid – while other kids are bouncing basketballs. They MAY get good at bouncing, but there is a lot more room for success with the words. If you practice, of course.

When I lived on my own, I didn’t own a TV because I had the library and my BF then got me a TV for my studio so he could watch something whenever he stayed over.

I kept that TV for over 15 years though never really used it still because I just read a lot still, though now the stuff I read is all over the place because of e-publishing and the stuff that one can get free out there in addition to the stuff I pay for.